PO Entry - WHY is the default “Our” qty (not Supplier qty)?

As promised, a continuation of this post, but now turning to purchase orders.

TL;DR: “Our” qty is the default default, but you can change that default in Company Config. True for receipts and POs. Problem solved.

FYI, obviously this is all moot if the parts are bought in an each/piece UOM. This matters only when there are funky UOMs involved - especially different ones on the same PO line.


But now I ask, WHY is “our quantity” the default?

POs seem to be very stubbornly set up for “our” quantity. (The supplier qty and UOM columns have to be manually unhidden in the grid; see other post for details and pics).

Am I missing something important? Is there a best practice with “our” quantity that I am not aware of?

Because to me, the supplier invoices what they sold (ONE spool of wire), not what we feel that we bought (250 feet). And we can’t buy 0.2 spools from them. So why bother with entering data into the “our” columns? Just jump to the supplier fields.

Also, the extended cost of a PO line is (unit price x supplier qty). So if “our qty” was a different UOM, do you expect people to do the math? I mean, no, right? Just use supplier qty and be done with it.

If you agree or disagree, let me know, please.

Because I feel like this needs to change via an Idea.

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Why not just change this setting in Company Configuration?

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Right, that’s fine. That was the other post.

My point isn’t what I set as the new default.

My questions are,

  1. Why is the original default set to “Our”? Flip of a coin or a good reason?
  2. Why is the “suppler qty” field very hidden in PO Entry?

Maybe it’s just terrible design and needs to be changed.

Or is it wisdom that I can’t see?

Your other post was for Receiving, the one I showed is for Purchasing. They can be set differently.

As to why is “Our” the default, that is because you need the constant to be able to do the conversion. Since the constant UOM is what you store inventory at, that is why Our is the default. Think of “Our” as being the known constant and the “Supplier” being the result of the math problem.

What do you mean by hidden, it seems pretty front and center to me?
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The column in the grid. Already got hit with that by 2 different buyers in the last couple days. (The others are on vacation lol.) They like entering via the grid. I would prefer that too if I had more than one line to enter.

Why not just create a layer that has that exposed so people don’t need to do it themselves?

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Right, I’m not trying to rehash the other post.

These are fine workarounds to the existing design.

I’m asking, why is it this way.

Or more to the point, “Should I be reinventing the wheel?”

Does the wheel need reinventing, or am I the one that is wrong?

I’m not sure what you are trying to reinvent?

Do you not use UOM conversions?

@JasonMcD In addition to @jkane point about the constant if you start with the PO suggestion which in our case is driven by the Job Material demand none of that needs to be converted it is all in Our UOM. It is enough to convert for POs, receipts and price lists doing it throughout the system would I feel lead to more quantity confusion.

Agreed. But there is a manual entry screen, so I mean there is some sort of need for it.

  • Let’s say the supplier sells wire by the spool, and say a spool is 100 feet.
  • Say you need 20 feet.
  • You enter 20 FT into “Our Qty”
  • Assuming part setup is right, the “supplier qty” shows 1 x 100SP (1 of a 100-ft spool)
  • But Time Phase shows 20 FT are coming in.
  • Presumably MRP will also calculate off of 20 FT of supply, not 1 spool, aka 100 FT.

The other thing is that price is always multiplied by supplier qty. So what our buyers here would do is enter 100 in “the” box (normally “our” qty), see the extended cost as 100x too high, and thus change “the” qty to 1 so the total price looks right. But the UOM is still FT, so they buy 1 FT instead of 100 FT. Then we think we don’t have enough so we buy more. This is a real story. It’s why we have over 6,000 feet of a certain part.

Yeah, that’s terrible, I know, need to train, etc.

But it keeps happening, year after year. At some point I have to stop blaming the people.

My viewpoint is that the supplier is the constant, I guess. I cannot make them sell this part in a different UOM. That’s why I start there.

Side note, I actually did this in dev while writing, and I was pleased to learn that the supplier quantity was stored in the DB as 1.00, not 0.20. It logically rounded up as required. Presumably because that UOM does not allow decimals?

Also I had set the MOQ and lot size to 100, so maybe that helped?

Yes, lot size, mins and multiplies all play into a proper suggestion of what the supplier sells.

I too am am a decade of why would the buyer do that when it is illogical, but I have to pick my battles.

Right, but my test was not a PO suggestion; it was manual. And it still did the supplier qty logically. So that’s nice.

Problem is, manual PO entry did NOT respect the MOQ I set on the part. It let me make a mess of that.

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Are your conversions set as Part Specific? If you can buy material in different sizes, it should be.

Rarely. Not sure why you ask…

For the most part, we’ve just made a special UOM for the thing: 55-gallon “keg”; 150-foot spool, 8-foot stick.

The one example I can think of is “pairs” of gloves that we buy. Supplier sells us 30 “pair” at say $1.00 per “pair.”

But we didn’t really buy 60 gloves at $0.50 each. We bought 30 bags for the vending machine.

Man, those receipts were always wrong until I made a special conversion for that part where 1 PR = 1 EA. That was years ago. Been fine ever since.

Since I never answered that: yes, we have the UOMs set up to convert. I imagine you gathered that already.

Do we though? I mean that half joking half serious. It’s literally the job of the buyer to purchase things in the correct quantity at the correct price from the correct supplier. Yeah so its complicated . . . yes the UI could be a little improved. But in my experience the main problem is people either not understanding what they are doing or not paying attention to what they are doing. UI design can only go so far.

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Kinetic’s good for maybe 99% of the parts…as long as there’s a standard UOM conversion inbound and outbound for whatever you’re stocking the part in. Case in point…ordering “1 roll” of raw paper for us doesn’t work…every roll’s got a different weight. So we stock and order in LB (usually 44000 on a 22-roll truckload) and receive each roll with a lot number at the individual weights.

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I mean, yes, I hate to give up on this generation of whippersnappers and all, but the idea of taking pride in mundane work is just gone.

I remember card catalogs in the library (the drawers with literally about a million index cards). There is this Pavlovian horror in me of putting things out of order.

But now the kids these days expect computers to catch all of our mistakes.

I don’t love it, but to be fair, this is a business. We don’t expect office workers to be burdened with these supposed menial tasks.

Ironically, though, anyone good at that kind of minutiae is someone I will try to recruit for being an Epicor admin. WE deal with the vast consequences of small mistakes like no one else does!

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It’ll always be a struggle regardless of ERP platform…ordering in the right quantities and right UOMs at the right prices - both sales and purchasing.

Are there going to be mistakes? Yup, we’re all human. Best thing we can all do is try to build out a system that minimizes the opportunities for error.

So what is your actual suggestion here? Make the default default the supplier qty instead of our qty? And add it to the lines grid? I don’t necessarily disagree but those things are so trivial to modify and the backlog of things I would like Epicor to address is so large its hard to feel like its that big a deal. Or am I missing what the change is that they should make?